Benjamin Franklin was not in favor of a central bank. He was strongly against it. Paper money and a central bank are two different things. Furthermore there is a huge difference between fractional reserve banking and paper money. "The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George the III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War."- Benjamin Franklin. The problem is not paper money, that is easy to regulate properly and transparently. The problem is that the government does not issue their own money anymore. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank, NOT a government entity. We choose to let bankers create the money and we borrow it from them. Why should we borrow it from them at interest when we could just make it ourselves and not pay this interest? Why should taxpayers be burdened with paying this debt when it's an unnecessary one? Is there one single reason? We never had a financial crisis in this country for the majority of our history until the institution of central banking in 1913. Since then occasional financial disaster has been the norm.